"How I Learned to Speak Dog" and Other Animal Stories

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

This is a wonderful anthology! It is packed with short, high-quality,
writings that recount first-hand encounters illustrating the essence of
that mysterious experience, the animal–human relationship. These are
not cutsey animal stories for children but rather thought-provoking
pieces that trample back and forth across the full range of emotions
people bring to encounters with animals. Love, trust, humor, fear,
contempt, respect, wonder, amazement, and appreciation are some of the
feelings laid open by the more than 50 true stories in the collection.

The work is a fundraiser for the British Columbia SPCA but in every
respect breaks through the negative image evoked by books published as
fundraisers. The writing is outstanding (not surprising, as many of the
contributors have some connection to the writing or publishing world).
The editing is professional, with no compromises allowed either in the
selection and organization of the stories or in the meticulous
copy-editing. The design, while not unusual, is fully up to commercial
standards. The result is that the work has the energy and strengths only
a group of dedicated volunteers can give to a book, without being in any
way amateurish.

The cast of characters includes all the usual domestic pets, as well as
bears, an octopus, a pigeon, a hummingbird, crows, deer, moose, and
wolves. There are stories of animal heroes, of hunters who revel in the
kill and hunters who hunt no more, of the death of best friends, of
unlikely behaviors and unusual encounters. The stories celebrate the
presence of animals in our lives and reflect back to us the wonder of
life forms we cannot fully understand.

Many of the stories are the sort readers will want to share, to read
over the phone to distant relatives, to read out loud by the fireplace
on winter nights, to loan to co-workers. It is hard to imagine any adult
who would not welcome this book as a gift.